Ni Hao Bitches!
Holy mother is this place incredible. I spent the entire plane ride wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, and now that I have a taste of it, I can't wait to really jump right in.
As stupid as this sounds, the two most arresting and overwhelming experiences thus far have been 1. Being totally surrounded by Chinese people speaking Chinese and 2. Having everything written in Chinese. Going to Europe or South America involves a kind of culture shock, but not something as visually stunning, literally stunning, as needing to rely entirely on pictures to beging to understand what is happening around you. Who knew Volve and Colgate could be transliterate into Mandarin characters, but I have the empty toothpaste box to prove it.
Speaking of Mandarin (pun INTENDED) I am thrilled with how much I can understand. I'm still just picking out words and some phrases, but it's much easier than I thought to differentiate between words, and the Beijing accent is pretty cool and easy to hear. This is really encouraging, and actually being here makes learning the language a lot more fun and interesting. I bravely led a group of students into the cafeteria this afternoon, taking the initiative with beautiful linguistic stylings such as...
Me: One plate of food, please.
Woman: No more food, last one.
Me: You no have more any plates food of?
Woman: No... Food...
Me: Ok... Lo Mien?
But we all got food in the end, and that is what I call success.
Beijing. Oh Beijing! Why are you so interesting!? By all external judgments this place is dirty, boring and crowded, but I can't get enough of it. Beijing (the part I have seen thus far, which excludes the downtown) is a sea of apartment buildings, taxi cabs, bikes and shops. The poverty is the same kind of poverty I saw in parts of Chile and especially in Ecuador. I can't quite describe what I mean, it's a kind of style and lifestyle, a very in-the-street way of life that is entirely lacking in North America. It's not necessarily poverty so much as letting your house/shop spill into the street. The Chinese have an amazing ability to sit/squat on little tiny things (bricks, rocks, fenders etc), they are not lazy, just amazingly adept at parking their little butts. More thoughts on this later.
Tomorrow is the Great Wall, and hopefully I'll get the pictures online. We leave for Xi'an and the Silk Road in a couple of days, but I should keep the updates flowing until then.
Zaijian!
Holy mother is this place incredible. I spent the entire plane ride wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, and now that I have a taste of it, I can't wait to really jump right in.
As stupid as this sounds, the two most arresting and overwhelming experiences thus far have been 1. Being totally surrounded by Chinese people speaking Chinese and 2. Having everything written in Chinese. Going to Europe or South America involves a kind of culture shock, but not something as visually stunning, literally stunning, as needing to rely entirely on pictures to beging to understand what is happening around you. Who knew Volve and Colgate could be transliterate into Mandarin characters, but I have the empty toothpaste box to prove it.
Speaking of Mandarin (pun INTENDED) I am thrilled with how much I can understand. I'm still just picking out words and some phrases, but it's much easier than I thought to differentiate between words, and the Beijing accent is pretty cool and easy to hear. This is really encouraging, and actually being here makes learning the language a lot more fun and interesting. I bravely led a group of students into the cafeteria this afternoon, taking the initiative with beautiful linguistic stylings such as...
Me: One plate of food, please.
Woman: No more food, last one.
Me: You no have more any plates food of?
Woman: No... Food...
Me: Ok... Lo Mien?
But we all got food in the end, and that is what I call success.
Beijing. Oh Beijing! Why are you so interesting!? By all external judgments this place is dirty, boring and crowded, but I can't get enough of it. Beijing (the part I have seen thus far, which excludes the downtown) is a sea of apartment buildings, taxi cabs, bikes and shops. The poverty is the same kind of poverty I saw in parts of Chile and especially in Ecuador. I can't quite describe what I mean, it's a kind of style and lifestyle, a very in-the-street way of life that is entirely lacking in North America. It's not necessarily poverty so much as letting your house/shop spill into the street. The Chinese have an amazing ability to sit/squat on little tiny things (bricks, rocks, fenders etc), they are not lazy, just amazingly adept at parking their little butts. More thoughts on this later.
Tomorrow is the Great Wall, and hopefully I'll get the pictures online. We leave for Xi'an and the Silk Road in a couple of days, but I should keep the updates flowing until then.
Zaijian!
posted by Tim | 10:00 AM
2 Comments:
hey tim! feel free to email me when you can about your summer happenings. i'm sorry that we didnt get the time to hang out before you left, but i cant wait to hear all about this country called china and the people there who sit on little things...lol confusing sentence, but idont want to go back to fix it. Ill be moving back to school in 2 weeks, so ill provide an address then, but for now, if you have the time, email me:)
love, Erika
ive got a hilarious story that i remembered when i read the title of your blog: "The P.R.C. is the place to be." One time i was playing Scattegories with Lexi and one of the items on the list was to name a country that started with a "p." well, like all normal people me and teesa both put down "paraguay" while lexi (what a whackjob) wrote "People's Republic of China." teesa and I got into a huge fight with her that led to Lexi pulling out an encyclopedia and us giving her a point, despite our efforts against it. the moral of the story: never play scategories with lexi.
(another time the category was types of trees and the letter was "t" and she wrote "thorny trees" for double points...lets just say that there were tears and the game was put away.)
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